When last we saw Danny Boyle, it was 2010 and he was in Denver picking up a career achievement award from the Starz Denver Film Festival.

Afterward, the director of films as varied as the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” the zombie flick “28 Days Later” and “127 Hours,” about Coloradan Aron Ralston’s dire misadventure in a slot canyon in Utah, was headed off to London to helm two very different endeavors: a Royal National Theatre production of “Frankenstein” and a modest affair known as the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The latter starred, well, the British Empire. The former featured Jonny Lee Miller, who was in Boyle’s breakthrough, breakneck 1996 movie “Trainspotting.” John Hodge was Boyle’s co-writer on that visceral tale of Scottish heroin addicts, and his writing partner on the director’s debut feature, “Shallow Grave.”

The two reteamed for Boyle’s latest, “Trance.” The revved and fractured noir stars James McAvoy as Simon, an art auctioneer who must consult a hypnotist after a perfectly plotted theft of a Goya goes awry.

Simon gets bonked on the head during the heist and can’t recall where he hid the bloody beauty. Rosario Dawson plays the hypnotherapist. The mesmerizing French actor Vincent Cassel is art thief Franck, Simon’s impatient partner in the crime.

Question: Did you give hypnosis a try for this film?

Answer: I did not. I’m a bit of a control freak. Like, I never have massages or anything like that. I’m always worried I’ll give something away. James and Vincent had a go. And Rosario did go off and do quite a lot research.

The big thing we found out was that for 95 percent of the population hypnosis is a benign, meditative process. Very positive. For the other 5 to 10 percent, it is a much more powerful tool, which is good for our film. What goes on in the film is deeply unethical and possible clinically.

Q: You have an Academy screening of “Shallow Grave” in New York, right?

A: Yeah, they’re showing that. They’re obviously doing it because “Trance” has a similarity to it: a triangle of characters, a crime and you don’t quite know who to root for. I don’t know if I should watch it (again). It’s a strange one.

Q: How often do you go back to watch your films?

A: Very rarely. You can get lost in that. It’s very intensive when you work on a film. You’re saturated, and you have to cleanse yourself of it, especially before you start the next one.

That said, weirdly enough, a couple of years ago, my daughters were watching “Sunshine” in my house with some mates and I was in the kitchen. They didn’t know I was there. I ended up watching about 40 minutes of it over their shoulder. I remember thinking, “Oh, it’s not bad.” It surprised me.

Q: I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of “Trance” for the audience, but can you talk about updating that noir staple, the femme fatale?

A: I’d always wanted to make a film with a woman in the engine room (in a leading role). I’ve worked with some great actresses, some decent parts, but never a woman in the engine room. I’ve made 10 films now, and that is disgraceful. But I didn’t want to abandon my natural tone and energy — the type of film I make. There’s a sequence where Rosario’s character uses her allure, her sensuality. And she’s a very beautiful woman, Rosario — she uses that deliberately to manipulate men. Now that’s classic film noir femme-fatale territory. But I didn’t want to cast it as an icy blond. I wanted to use it for a proper reason.

Q: Vincent Cassel (“Black Swan”), I love him.

A: I do too, and it’s troubling. [He laughs.]

Q: He’s so compelling on screen. What did you learn about him as an actor?

A: I don’t know what it is about movies, he’s not conventionally attractive if you took him apart, took him to bits, not really, you know? But his actual possession of the camera, his knowledge of storytelling, he gets to the essence. Whether he’s playing dark, troubled, kind of violent, or vulnerable, he relaxes into it. You’ve heard it before, but doing it is a different thing altogether — “I belong here, I love these ideas, I’m going to put them through my own filter” and presto!

Q: How intense and exhausting was the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony in London?

A: The problem with the Olympics isn’t that it’s exhausting in terms of adrenaline. It’s the deadening effect of all the meetings, procedures, protocol, procurements.

You’re basically dying. In fact, to go off and make a short, delicious adult movie with sex, violence, the mind was like a big holiday. [Boyle shot “Trance” before the Olympics and edited it after.]

To answer your question properly. When you make a movie, it’s a personal thing. (The Olympics ceremony) wasn’t like that. It felt like national service, like you really needed do something for your country about something you believe in, about your country.

Ben Platt, who more than three years ago spoke the words and sang the music of “Dear Evan Hansen” for the first time, going on to win the Tony Award in June for best actor in a musical, will leave the celebrated musical in the fall, the show’s producers announced Monday.